1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a job management method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been a demand that a user desires to print one more set of documents after it is printed. Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2001-63158 discloses a printing technique for printing documents according to a reprint instruction (hereinafter referred to as reprint) via an operation of a panel of an image forming apparatus without a need for retransmission of print data thereof from a data processing apparatus.
In a normal print processing, the image forming apparatus stores a print job of print data transmitted from the data processing apparatus in a storage device of the image forming apparatus and deletes the stored print job after completing print processing of the print job. On the other hand, in a reprint mode in a reprint technique, the image forming apparatus keeps storing the stored print job without deleting the stored print job after completing the print processing until the storage device comes to be short of a space. With the above configuration, a user can reprint a document (image) having been printed once according to the reprint instruction via the operation of the panel of the image forming apparatus without a necessity of retransmission of the print data from the data processing apparatus.
In the reprint mode, the image forming apparatus stores the print job in a job spool area in a storage device. As a result thereof, when a capacity of the job spool area becomes full, the image forming apparatus has to delete any one of the print jobs stored in the job spool area to clear an area for storing the next print job. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2001-63158 discloses an image forming apparatus that deletes print data having the oldest storage time-and-date information in all the pieces of print data stored in the job spool area when the image forming apparatus receives print data, thereby securing an area for storing the next print data.
However, in a case where jobs stored in the job spool area are displayed on a user interface (UI) screen in the form of a job list in response to a reprinting request by the user via an operation panel, a job having the oldest time-and-date information can also be displayed. At the moment, if the image forming apparatus receives new print data immediately after receiving an execution instruction for reprinting the job having the oldest time-and-date information, it deletes the job having the oldest time-and-date information that is selected as a target of reprinting to secure a space for the new print data in the job spool area. Namely, a problem may come up that the job the user instructed to reprint it cannot be performed.